Walking Wolf by Nancy A. Collins

Author:Nancy A. Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

Chapter Eight

After the death of the Sundown Kid at the hands of Witchfinder Jones, I reckon I went a little crazy. I wandered the high plains for several days in a feverish delirium, and at times I thought Medicine Dog rode beside me, his blind eyes undaunted by the snow. Other times I fancied I saw Sundown standing on the horizon, waving me on, Whatisit’s moronic laughter echoing from the darkness.

On the third day after Pilate’s Basin, poor, faithful Erebus literally dropped dead underneath me, spilling me back into reality. There was little I could do but eat the horse, which strengthened me enough to press on. I continued on in my true skin, preying on antelope, the occasional buffalo calf, and any other four-legged creatures that crossed my path. It was easier to survive the winter as a werewolf than it was a man.

At the end of each day, I would find an outcropping of rock, or dig out an abandoned prairie dog burrow in order to shelter myself from the unceasing winds. I listened to the true wolves howling from the distant hilltops like lost souls mourning their expulsion from Hell. Sometimes I would take up the howl, only to hear confusion and mistrust in their reply. Even without seeing or scenting me, my wild cousins knew an unnatural thing when they heard it.

I moseyed westward without planning it that way. Before I knew it, I was leagues beyond my old tribe’s hunting grounds, moving towards lands undreamed of when I was a boy tending Eight Clouds’ horses. I have no way of knowing precisely how long I spent in the wilderness—at least two seasons, perhaps three. I steered clear of both Whites and Indians during that time.

Since leaving the Comanche, I had found little joy in the White Man’s world. And while I had known a kind of friendship with the likes of Praetorius and Sundown, I knew their types to be few and far between. Buffalo-Face and Medicine Dog were right—it was best not to trust them on general principles and give them as wide a berth as possible. As for why I kept my distance from the Indians … well, it seemed to me I was cursed. Everyone I had ever loved or befriended in my short life—for I was still shy of my twentieth year—had ended up dead, some by my own hand.

But there’s only so long anyone—human or vargr—can spend alone before anger gives way to loneliness. And loneliness, left untended, can sour into madness. I thought of McCarthy, isolated until his mind turned in on itself like a fox in a snare, and began to fear that I would lose control of myself and slip back into the red-eyed savagery that had cost me everything. I decided it was time for me to leave the wilderness and seek out others. Since the odds of my hooking up with one of my own kind were slim to none, I had no choice but to seek out the company of humans.

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